1. Field of the Disclosure
Embodiments disclosed herein relate generally to compositions and methods used in completing a well. In particular, embodiments disclosed herein relate to compositions and methods used in gravel packing operations.
2. Background
During the drilling of a wellbore, various fluids are typically used in the well for a variety of functions. The fluids may be circulated through a drill pipe and drill bit into the wellbore, and then may subsequently flow upward through wellbore to the surface. Common uses for well fluids include: lubrication and cooling of drill bit cutting surfaces while drilling generally or drilling-in (i.e., drilling in a targeted petroliferous formation), transportation of “cuttings” (pieces of formation dislodged by the cutting action of the drill bit) to the surface, controlling formation fluid pressure to prevent blowouts, maintaining well stability, suspending solids in the well, minimizing fluid loss into and stabilizing the formation through which the well is being drilled, fracturing the formation in the vicinity of the well, displacing the fluid within the well with another fluid, cleaning the well, testing the well, transmitting hydraulic horsepower to the drill bit, emplacing a packer, abandoning the well or preparing the well for abandonment, and otherwise treating the well or the formation.
Once the well has been drilled and a target reservoir has been encountered, the well is ready to be completed. Typically, target formations are completed in one of two ways: cased hole completion technique or an uncased completion technique. The technique for completing a well is dependent on several factors, which are known to those skilled in the art of completing target reservoirs. For an cased hole completion, it is common practice to run a string of casing into the well bore, cement the casing to the target reservoir, displace the drilling fluid to a clear, solid-free, non-damaging completion fluid by using a series of wash/dispersing chemicals, and then run the production tubing inside the casing. Once the casing is clean from solids/debris and filled with completion fluid, perforations are typically created to extend through the casing string, through the cement that secures the casing string in place, and a short distance into the formation. These perforations may be created by detonating shaped charges carried in a perforating gun. The perforations created cross one or more target zones to allow fluids to enter the interior of the wellbore (in the case of a production well) or be injected down the production tubing and into the reservoir (in the case of an injection well).
After the well is perforated, a stimulation or sand control treatment process may be performed. Sand control processes may prevent, after the well is completed and placed in production, formation sand from unconsolidated formations being swept into the flow path along with formation fluid, which erodes production components in the flow path. Similarly, in uncased boreholes or openhole completions, where an open face is established across the target zone, formation sand from unconsolidated formations may also be swept into the flow path along with formation fluid.
Thus, with either cased or uncased well bores, one or more sand screens may be installed in the flow path between the production tubing and the rock face in the producing reservoir. Additionally, the annulus around the screen may be packed with a relatively coarse sand or gravel into the void between the reservoir rock and the outside of the screen, to act as a filter to reduce the amount of fine formation sand reaching the screen, to support the porous medium of the producing reservoir so that it will not collapse into the void between the reservoir rock and the outside of the screen and to seal off the annulus in the producing zone from non-producing formations. When the sand tries to move through the gravel, it is filtered and held back by the gravel and/or screen, but formation fluids continue to flow unhindered (by either the gravel or screen) into the production string.
In deep wells, reliability of the sand face completion is very important, due to the prohibitively high cost of intervention. Further, as many such wells are completed open hole and in relatively incompetent rock, gravel packing of open-hole horizontal wells is increasingly becoming a standard practice in the deep-water, sub-sea completion environment. The gravel packing process involves mixing gravel with a carrier fluid, and pumping the slurry down the tubing and through the cross-over, thereby flowing into the annulus between the screen and the wellbore. The carrier fluid in the slurry leaks off into the formation and/or through the screen. The screen is designed to prevent the gravel in the slurry from flowing through it and entering the production tubing. As a result, the gravel is deposited in the annulus around the screen where it becomes tightly packed, forming a “gravel pack.” Thus, gravel is deposited adjacent an open hole where it serves to prevent sand and other formation fines from flowing into the wellbore.
Proper selection of the carrier fluid is essential to a gravel packing process. Ideally, the carrier fluid shall not cause any permeability reduction of the formation. When viscous fluids are used, carrier fluid must also have sufficient viscosity to suspend and carry the gravel during placement. Carrier fluids are either considered “water-based” or “oil-based” depending on the constituency of their external continuous phase. Aqueous-base fluids can be tailored to be compatible with most formations simply by including salts such as potassium chloride, ammonium chloride, or tetramethyl ammonium chloride. Consequently, to date, the convention in gravel-packing horizontal wells has been water packing or shunt-packing with water-based viscous fluids comprising a brine, a gelling agent such as hydroxyethylcellulose (HEC), gums (xanthan or guar), or a viscoelastic surfactant, and breakers to minimize the pressure required to move the fluid back to the wellbore.
Accordingly, there exists a continuing need for developments in carrier fluids for gravel packing processes.